


yamazaki 12

by shouldbeworking



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Excessive Drinking, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Persona 5: The Royal Spoilers, Post-Canon, performing heterosexuality to own your homoerotic rival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:13:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23612836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldbeworking/pseuds/shouldbeworking
Summary: Goro finally glances over at them from across the bar, oh-so-casually. He raises his glass to Ren in the smallest of salutes, with the smallest of smirks, and then settles his attention firmly back on the woman he’s sitting next to.“He knows we’re here,” Ren announces. He’s probably known for a while. Embarrassing.“Damn it,” Ryuji shares a weary look with Ann. “Guess that’s it then. I’ll grab the first round.”
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 19
Kudos: 543





	yamazaki 12

**Author's Note:**

> this story contains **spoilers for royal**. please do not read if you don’t want to be spoiled :)

He should have known.

Ren’s life is pretty boring these days. Not that he has a problem with that. After saving the world, saving the world again, saving his former enemy from conspiracy and prison, and then entering into a detente with that former enemy because neither one of them knew what to do with each other… well, Ren is fine with life being a little boring.

This is simply how normal people live, after all, and Ren and his friends are normal people now. Apartment, college, job, homework, etc. In fact, the most interesting stories he has these days usually start something like: _[insert friend here] has more relationship drama_ , or sometimes _[insert class here]’s group project is going terribly_. Or, of course, _we went out to [insert place here] and Goro Akechi was there too and it was awkward_.

So anyway. Ren, Ann, and Ryuji are out at a bar, and Goro Akechi is here too, and it’s awkward.

This mis-fated place, this Bar of Unfortunate Destiny, is pretty standard faire all things considered. Big room, circular bar encapsulating some taps, bartenders rushing around inside to fill glasses and mix cocktails. And it’s busy here too: people of all ages are packed in everywhere, acting about as rowdy as a midwinter Friday night would imply.

Goro Akechi is here.

“Maybe we should just go,” Ann says, nervously twirling her ponytail. “Isn’t there another bar down the street?”

Ryuji seems solidly on the fence. “I know we’re supposed to be cool and all, but I dunno how I feel about havin’ a beer with him lurking around…”

That’s about when Goro finally glances over at them from across the room, oh-so-casually. He raises his glass to Ren in the smallest of salutes, with the smallest of smirks, and then settles his attention firmly back on the woman he’s sitting next to.

“He knows we’re here,” Ren announces. He’s probably known for a while. Embarrassing.

“Damn it,” Ryuji shares a weary look with Ann. “Guess that’s it then. I’ll grab the first round.”

“Should… we say hi?” Ann visibly grimaces at the idea.

They don’t.

They have before. It always sucks.

Awkward small talk devolves into awkward dancing around the sheer everything of it all, and then before he knows it Ren’s normal person night out becomes something complicated and… no, not tonight. Tonight is the night they reach that point where they can see each other out in the city and not be weird about it. Tonight will be normal.

But holy shit, he’s so _bored_.

Ren shakes his head a little, blinks some dizziness away. “This seems strong,” he mutters, and holds up his almost-empty beer to inspect the label. Twenty percent!?

“Tastes like shit, too.” Ryuji sticks out his tongue. “Some special, eurgh—why are all these new breweries tryin’ so damn hard? I’m switching to water after this.”

( _I should probably stop too…_ )

Ren takes a last swig and quickly claims his glass of water before Ann steals it from him, as she’s known to do. He leans against the counter, listening again to his two companions catching up on this and that, letting his mind wander…

Who the heck is that woman Goro is next to, anyway? He’s sitting there still, hasn’t moved or left, smiling away at her with his cute little fake smile.

Is that his girlfriend, then?

Does he have a girlfriend?

Does he want one?

Ren tries to imagine Goro Akechi picking up some random person, someone who doesn’t know anything about anything, going home with them… let alone actually dating them… it feels like an impossible thing. Pigs flying, hell frozen, blood raining from the sky.

Normal. Things are normal now. Ren dates people. Ann does, Makoto does, Ryuji tries his best. So, Goro can date people too. Apparently.

“—me? Excuse me, sir?” Ren blinks back to awareness, finds a bartender standing directly in front of him with a tumbler in hand. “From the gentleman across the room.”

Ah, shit.

“He said you looked like you needed a pick-me-up.”

Ah, _shit_.

Goro seems to not be paying him any attention right now, still chatting away with that mystery woman and sipping at a full glass exactly like Ren’s.

Unfortunately for Goro, Ren learned to see through all of his acts a long time ago.

So, this is the price he has to pay for sparing them both from yet another awkward hello and even more awkward small talk. Ren does not need a pick-me-up, thank you very much, but he can’t turn down the drink without looking unreasonably rude… he sighs and accepts the temporary defeat. The gauntlet has been thrown: he’ll simply have to come up with a proportional response.

( _It tastes terrible… am I really going to drink this?_ )

“Yamazaki 12: one of our more popular whiskies,” the bartender explains when he asks.

“Yo, didn't know you were a whisky guy, Renren!” Ryuji yells in his ear, just so incredibly loud, having returned victorious from the restroom. “How stylish, haha~”

“Hm,” Ren doesn’t respond. The taste reminds him of those awful experimental medicines he used to take. Where did Ann run off to?

“Damn, you seein’ this though?” Ryuji is being painfully unsubtle about looking across the room. “How does a guy like him have game like that?”

Goro Akechi gently tucks a lock of the woman’s hair behind her ear. She’s blushing and giggling.

“What d’ya think he’s like? You know, in…” Ryuji makes a face. “Augh, ack, never mind. I don’t wanna think about it.” He shivers dramatically, sidles up to the bar to grab another beer. So much for water.

Goro’s whisky is getting low. Ren downs his own.

There. He finished it first: step one complete. And he doesn’t miss how Goro catches up almost immediately after, just as he expected.

Now’s his chance.

Ren orders them both martinis for this round (because he’s always liked the little olives) to settle the score and then goes on the offensive. He‘s already feeling pretty buzzed thanks to that extraordinarily alcoholic beer and the double whisky he just chugged, but that only makes flirting even easier than it usually is. And his plan works: Goro abandons the woman he was sitting with (not a girlfriend, then) and approaches a different one to stay “ahead.”

Life may be normal now, but it’s a relief to see that Goro Akechi is still Goro Akechi.

“She’s cute,” Ann pokes him when he returns to the bar—Ren had noticed Goro was holding a new drink when Goro rolled up the sleeves of his collared shirt, so here Ren is too. “I thought you weren’t trying to go home with anyone tonight.”

“Mona asked me not to,” Ren explains. He really wasn’t planning on it at all, for a few more reasons than just that, “but desperate times, desperate… whatever.”

“Hm,” she follows Ren’s eyeline with much more subtlety and grace than Ryuji. “Have you talked to him yet? He keeps looking at you.”

Ann is such a friend. “Good,” Ren says, and… hold on, where did that girl he was talking to go?

“Hey, are you…?” Ann giggles. “You seem a little—”

( _This is probably fine._ )

“Oh, so you have two siblings?” Ren prompts the woman that is his second attempt, running a hand along her arm and doing his best impression of a person who’s as invested in this conversation as she is. She smiles an affirmative and continues enthusiastically rambling about her life.

Goro’s fake-laugh sounds from across the room.

Ren gets another drink.

It’s not until the latest woman he’s talking to complains about how crowded it is in here that he remembers the very first girl had invited him out to another bar down the street, and that’s why she was gone. Oh well. He’s maybe a little bit more tipsy than he realized, and he’s probably offending these poor women by dropping them as soon as he’s positive he’s gotten Goro’s attention, but—

But it’s only a… something response. Proper? _Proportional_ , when he purposely bumps shoulders with Goro on his way to the restroom. And equally proper of Goro to greet him at the bar sometime after.

How many drinks has Ren had now?

He orders two more whiskies.

“How are your studies?” Goro smiles cheerfully, attempting their usual small talk anyway, as if they haven’t been locked in battle all night. Because of course he is.

“Good. Yours?”

“Going well, of course. Though I must admit…”

Goro wastes no time launching into one of his Goro-rants, which are usually very cute and attention-grabbing, and Ren really should be paying him the attention he deserves, but someone was talking about it earlier and now all he can think about is…

Would Goro Akechi be more of a rough type? Growls and bites? Demands and commands? Or would he be soft, quiet, sensitive… what would it feel like to—wow, he’s so tall, when did he get so tall? Ren has never… not with someone taller than— _holy shit_ if Goro knew Ren was trying to figure out what he’s like in bed while standing right next to him… oh no. He’s a detective. Has he already figured it out?

“…points marked off for not writing in an ‘academic style,’ which frankly…”

That’s a no, then.

Ren rests his chin on his hand, leans against the bar and just watches. It’s been far too long since he was last lucky enough to bear witness to a tirade of this magnitude. And Goro is a sight to see, after this long night out: his hair a little puffier than usual, collar askew, hands gesticulating wildly—oh, shit, he’s done it again.

Ren blinks, tries to focus his vision and attention both.

“…professor was completely unprepared, but really I could care less about—”

“Isn’t it ‘couldn’t’ care less,” Ren hums.

“Ah, yes. Didn’t I say that? Haha, the slip of a tongue, you caught me,” he giggles, and wait… is Goro _drunk?_

( _Wait, am I drunk?_ )

And it’s freezing out here. Why are they outside?

“Because you have to stop fucking talking about this!” Goro shouts at him.

Oh, he can kind of recall… being pushed out the back entrance of the bar after crossing a line. One of many, too many lines forbidden by their shaky truce. The dumpster next to him provides pretty solid evidence that the memory is accurate.

“I thought we had a bond,” Ren tries again, he feels like he’s said this before, begging over and over and over and—

“You know this, you _don’t_ —”

“I do,” Ren pleads against whatever the hell stupid argument Goro is attempting to make, seventeen and furious and desperate and it hurts, _again_ , “I do, I miss you, Goro.”

“Why the fuck are you like this!?“ Goro snarls, looking more haggard than Ren has ever seen him.

“You’re not—”

“I _killed_ you!”

Ren would roll his eyes if he could remember how. “That was like… a million years ago!”

Goro’s jaw drops, “it was four years ago! Four! How could you forget?”

“I don’t think about it,” he laughs. “It doesn’t matter!”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because—”

Because he has better things to think about.

Because Goro Akechi both types, all types, somehow. Rough where Ren’s wrist is pinned against the brick wall behind him. Soft in the way he tucks a lock of Ren’s hair behind his ear.

Ren runs his hands greedily along toned arms, over rolled-up sleeves, under that twisted-up collared shirt. It’s Goro’s breath, out of all these new and overwhelming sensations, that Ren’s half-aware mind fixates on—so hot, puffed against his lips, his jaw, his neck. It’s February, it’s snowing, it’s the middle of the night. Ren is pressed against that unyielding, frozen brick and Ren is still going to overheat.

“Goro,” he manages to choke out, answering the hushed, reverent chants of his own name.

“ _Goro…_ ”

( _Didn’t I want to tell him something…?_ )

“Can’t believe I saw that, gonna be scarred for life…” Ryuji mumbles next to him, his head in his hands, this train is so wobbly…

“Where’d Ann go?”

“Oh my god dude,” so… wobbly… “for the hundredth time, Ann went home with some chick. She’s fine. You don’t gotta worry about her. You’re really messed up, huh?”

Ryuji stalks over to the fridge in their apartment, shoves a glass of water into Ren’s chest, “drink all of this. And then fill it up and drink it again.”

“You stink,” Mona whines when Ren collapses fully-clothed onto his mattress. He doesn’t care. He’s so tired, and so confused, and so dizzy, that he falls headfirst into restless dreams the moment he closes his eyes.

* * *

  
Well, Ren feels like shit.

Unfortunately for him, he’s felt worse.

Unfortunately for him, this isn’t the first time he’s had to recall vague memories while simultaneously being completely fucked up. And at least this time he doesn’t have a prosecutor interrupting his thoughts every few seconds.

It’s so easy to conjure the image of Sae Niijima slamming her fists against that table. “ _Ren Amamiya, what you did do last night? Tell me!_ ”

( _What did I do last night…?_ )

Ren cringes as he examines himself in the mirror, at the reddened spots on his neck and collarbone. Real physical evidence that yes, that happened, and no, it cannot be taken back.

Who the hell still leaves hickeys, at their age?

Goro Akechi, apparently.

He presses his fingers against one of the marks and shivers.

_Goro…_

How did this even happen? Who started it? Ren’s flaky memory skips around from arguing to making out to more arguing to more… there are important pieces missing in the middle, pieces he should definitely have. Especially considering what he has to do now.

“Mornin’ sunshine,” Ryuji says cautiously when Ren finally emerges from his bedroom. “Good to see y’ain’t dead.”

“Not yet,” Ren sighs, tugging awkwardly at his turtleneck and grabbing his coat. “Goro texted me. I’m meeting him at the café across the street.”

“Ohhh thank god,” Ryuji collapses dramatically next to his bowl of cereal. “You guys have got some serious shit to work out.”

Yeah. _Yeah_. Long overdue, it turns out.

Goro is already there, waiting for him, because of course he is. He’s claimed a fairly private two-seater in the corner and there’s a coffee and a croissant on the table in front of him. Neither look like they’ve been touched.

“I suppose we haven’t settled things between us as cleanly as we thought, hm?” Goro asks even as Ren is still taking his seat. Ren’s head throbs.

“How are you feeling?”

“Just fine, thank you,” Goro sneers, like he’s offended Ren even asked. His sweater is on backwards. “Stop stalling.”

“I’m not stalling,” Ren says, getting comfortable in his chair. “I’m holding you hostage.”

( _If I can keep him here long enough…_ )

Goro smirks. “Hilarious. You really believe I won’t leave until this is resolved?”

“Yup.” Ren doesn’t need to list the evidence. Goro is the one who texted, Goro is the one who arrived earlier than Ren’s fifteen minutes early, Goro is—

“Fine,” he says, “I’ll admit it, I don’t like the thought of this eternally hanging over my head.“ Yeah, Ren knew that too. “So let’s clear the air and be done with each other for good.”

Oh.

It’s like that, then.

Ren’s heart rate rockets to a point his body can’t fully handle while this hungover; he feels sick. He reaches up, then puts his hand flat on the table, in an aborted move to fiddle with his hair. A habit he’s trying to break.

( _Done with each other… for good?_ )

Goro is staring at him intently, soft lips a firm line. He’s waiting.

“I miss you.”

Ren said this last night, too. He said it a lot. But it’s the truth, and Ren doesn’t know what could possibly convince Goro Akechi besides truth.

Goro sighs, shakes his head. “You really don’t.” He smiles sadly, like he’s got Ren all figured out. “You miss the idea of me. It’s purely nostalgia, you see. The glory days of the great Phantom—”

“Don’t tell me how I feel,” Ren interrupts, brow furrowing. “It’s not nostalgia, it’s last night. It’s this, right now.” He gestures between them. ”I miss this, I miss you. For better or worse, you make life interesting.”

“Often for worse, for you,” Goro deflects quickly.

Once, just once, Ren would like to have a life-determining conversation without a headache handicapping him. He leans forward, “you know, my wish wasn’t just for you to be alive. I wanted us to be together.”

There’s a flash of fear in Goro’s eyes that he doesn’t suppress quite fast enough, a look Ren hasn’t seen in a very long time. “It doesn’t have to be like that,” Ren adds, though after last night he thinks maybe it should be like that, that maybe they’d been approaching whatever was between them the wrong way for years. “I… I don’t want to be done with you, not ever. I want you in my life. If you want that too. Do you?”

Goro blinks at him. “Turning the question on me?” He asks quietly.

Ren stays silent.

Goro doesn’t answer for a long time. And when he does, it’s not with words. He stands up from their table, digs into his pockets, and places some cash on the table. His coffee and croissant are still untouched.

Ren stares up at him. At red eyes still keen as ever, the silky hair he’d been lucky enough to run his fingers through last night, how tall and proud and confident he’s become over the years. He tries to memorize all of it, because if… if this it…

“There’s a restaurant that opened last week that I’ve been meaning to try,” Goro announces abruptly. “If you’re… interested. You could. Join me.”

Ren stands up fast enough to make himself dizzy. “Yeah! Yeah, sure.” He pulls out his phone to check his calendar, because he’s a stupid adult with stupid responsibilities now. “Would this Friday work?”

Goro shakes his head. “I’m afraid not. Thursday is the only possible day… are you available then?”

Kind of a weird day of the week to go to a restaurant but, “yes, I can go on Thursday.”

“Splendid,” Goro nods. “It’s a date, then.” 

And then Goro Akechi takes Ren’s hand, brings it to his lips, and presses a gentle kiss to his knuckles.

( _…???_ )

“See you Thursday, Joker,” Goro says on his way out of the café, waving a carefree hand behind him.

Ren stands stock still and watches the space he left for a while. His knuckles burn. At some point later he collapses back down into his chair. He slides Goro’s cold coffee and croissant over to his side of the table and picks thoughtlessly at the breakfast, while he tries to force his brain into making sense of what the heck just happened.

It’s not until he leaves the café, still tired and dizzy and confused, adding a reminder on his calendar for next Thursday, that he realizes.

Thursday is February 14th.

Thursday is Valentine’s Day.

Ren bursts out laughing in the middle of the street.

He should have known, he _really_ should have known. Goro Akechi doesn’t do anything by halves, Goro Akechi always manages to surprise him, and Ren’s life is about to get a whole lot more interesting.

It’s a date, then.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me [@shouldbewerking](https://twitter.com/shouldbewerking)


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